There is calm.

There’s calm to be found in the predawn hours,
in the still silence of a world still sleeping.
When the quiet settles into the foundations and even the cracks seem to fill with it, seeping out onto the floor.
Valium laced thoughts tumble in slow motion,
offering rest, relief, redemption.

An invitation for submission,
an overture made in vain.
Sedation has no hold in the face of sedition.

There’s a buzzing under my skin that tells me to run,
to fight,
to throw myself into the abyss to see if
Gods and monsters look the same in the dark.

(They do.)

Unfolding myself from daylight’s cookie cutter box,
stacked neatly with all the others,
(all the same.)
I am a collection of edges,
of mirror fragments
and deconstructed balisongs.

The blades of my shoulders slice into the night,
shedding the tatters of my confinement while my teeth sink deep
into the flesh of societal supposition and
I am not alone here.

Just another nocturnal predator racing the dawn,
the coming light, the waking day, and with it,
the waking world.